


A Tale of the Right Thing; Past Is Prologue

by ShamanOfHedon



Series: The Right Thing [7]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls Online, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 16:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20230951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShamanOfHedon/pseuds/ShamanOfHedon
Summary: A strange woman fell from the sky and saved all of Tamriel from Molag Bal. Now Queen Ayrenn wants answers. Who is the Vestige? Where did she come from? And why does she feel so familiar?





	A Tale of the Right Thing; Past Is Prologue

Queen Ayrenn looked.... tired. She had just arrived back home in Summerset, having completed the usual protocols requiring her to greet her proxy queen in Alinor, and both debrief and be debriefed. Having finished that, she had retired to her private chambers. It had been almost a year since she had last been here, having been preoccupied with other matters, not the least of which was the long and bloody Three Alliances War. 

But the war was presently in a lull. A truce had been called a few months prior, as a stranger who had earned the trust and respect of all three factions had convinced all three to agree that stopping the Planemeld which the Daedric Prince Molag Bal was trying to achieve was more important than the war. She, High King Emeric of the Daggerfall Covenant, and Jorunn the Skald-King of the Ebonheart Pact, had all, if reluctantly, agreed with the stranger whom had earned the respect and friendship of all three, and a truce was declared. Three months later, Molag Bal was long since defeated, and his threat to Nirn averted. The truce was still holding, just waiting for the fragile peace to be broken by whomever blinked first.

Ayrenn smiled faintly, privately hoping the truce would last long enough for her people recover some. She knew the truce, however much she might hope otherwise, was doomed to end and restart the war, but she had sworn to herself that she would not be the first to break it. And however she felt about Emeric or Jorunn, she doubted either of them would either. No, when the truce broke it would be because some paranoid soldier from any of the three factions got too nervous and twitchy with their bow. And then the blood would once again start spilling like rivers across Cyrodyil.

If nothing else, she took comfort in the fact that the war would likely progress faster when it picked up again. Thanks to the stranger who had saved Nirn, all of the matters that distracted her and the other rulers in their respective lands were dealt with. She would not have to split her focus between the war effort and the attacks at home. The Veiled Heritance was in tatters and no longer any kind of threat, and the Court of Bedlam was all but wiped out after the stranger had sent Nocturnal packing. And the spies working under her best friend Razum Dar reported the same was true of the other alliances. 

The stranger had first appeared almost a year ago, in the Daggerfall Covenant. She had literally fallen from the sky itself, crashing into the sea near the port town of Stros M'Kai. That alone was enough to put her on everyone's radar. People in the Covenant at first, then through spy reports and just general word of mouth spreading across Tamriel, the woman who fell from the sky and lived quickly became a person every major player wanted to keep tabs on.

At first, it seemed she was loyal to the Covenant, as she helped Emeric and his people throughout his territories fight back the machinations of necromancers, cults, Daedric Princes meddling in mortal affairs, and so on. But spies soon reported that the stranger, who identified herself only as "Marie" and said little to nothing else about herself, was adamantly refusing to have anything to do with the war efforts. She was blunt and straight forward with Emeric; she was there to help EVERYONE, to save all of Tamriel from Deadric princes and their plots. She would help anyone who needed help and stop evil people from doing harm. She would ruin every plan by any of the princes to screw with mortals, and she would protect the innocent, but she would NOT swear any fealty to the Covenant, and would not EVER set foot in Cyrodil to choose sides in the war. This was, she was reported to have said, because the war was a fixed event, whatever that meant, and that it was nothing she could have any part of. That she was here specifically to prevent the Princes from meddling with the outcome. And she refused every single request that she elaborate on that statement.

Two months later, the reports of Razum Dar's spies proved true, when she vanished from the lands of the Covenant, and for a second time fell from the sky, this time just off the shores of Kenarthi's Roost. Ayrenn decided to send Raz himself to meet her, to feel this stranger out and decide if the reports were truly correct. It took Raz less than two days to decide they were, as he witnessed the woman immediately throw herself into foiling a plot by the Sea Elves to trigger a spiritual death across all of the Dominion's mainland territories by killing the Silvenar and the Green Lady. Had she been a loyal Covenant agent, it would have served her better to do nothing, and allow the Seal Elves and their co-conspirators in the cult of Hircine, lead by The Hound, to prevent a new Silvenar & Green Lady from rising. Instead she fiercely investigated the Silvenar's murder, convinced the dying Green Lady to delay her revenge so she could find justice in a way that would preserve the Dominion rather than destroy it, and convinced the Khajiit of the island to join.

When Marie had driven the Sea Elves from Kenarthi's Roost, she traveled to Auridon. Raz had traveled ahead of her and told Ayrenn in no uncertain terms that the stranger Marie was exactly as she claimed to be; there to help, regardless of faction, loyal to the people of all Tamriel, and not any one faction. So Ayrenn told Raz to invite Marie to work in secret with the Eyes of the Queen, and see if Marie could do what they had so far failed to do; seek out the source of the racist resistance to her rule. For three years since her coronation as Queen shortly before the war began, there were rumours and plots and incidents being attributed to the Veiled Heritance, but every effort she and Raz had made to uncover anything that could help them unravel the plots failed. Marie had fresh eyes however, and it took her all of one week to uncover Ayrenn's very own sister-in-law Kinlady Estre as the leader of the traitors. 

Like Emeric and his people before them, Ayrenn and Raz came to trust Marie implicitly, and call her friend. And once Marie had saved Auridon from the Heritance and various other threats, she moved on to the mainland, protecting the transition of the new Silvenar and Green Lady, ending the threat of the sea elves and Hircine's cult, and after that, helping protect the choosing of a new Mane of the Khajit people. Raz and Ayrenn met her again many times in the 3 months it took Marie to accomplish all of this, and were genuinely saddened when she told them it was time to move on. And sure enough, a few days later, their agents in the lands of the Pact reported Marie had fallen from the sky yet again, and repeated the same process, earning the trust of people with every right to presume her an enemy agent, putting her life on the line without a second thought, and foiling the plots of corrupt mortals and meddling Daedra. 

Finally, 9 months after she first appeared, having wn the trust and respect of so many people, Marie asked the three rulers to meet with her to discuss the truce, and once she had gotten the truce agreed to, she lead a small army made up of friends and allies she had made across all three factions leading members of both the Mages and Fighters Guilds straight into Coldharbour itself, where she herself did the impossible; faced a God in mortal combat and won. She beat Molag Bal badly enough to end his planemeld and embarrass him into retreating from any further attempts to conquer Nirn.

In the three months since then, Marie had continued to do as she had been doing. She had foiled the machinations of the so called Court of Bedlam across the isle of Vvardefell and then Summerset itself. By the time though that Ayrenn could free herself to finally travel home hoping to see Marie again, Marie had already left. Ayrenn asked Raz if he had told Marie she was coming home to see her again, but Marie had responded with quiet tears, asking him to give the queen her regrets, but she had to return to Vvardenfell immediately and talk to a friend about recent events. Raz chose not to push, having seen Marie show such pain before, when she had been forced to choose which of two sisters would become Mane, and which would die to protect the new Mane from the Shadowmane.

Once Ayrenn had taken some time to herself in her chambers, having relaxed in a bath and then getting caught up on reports and missives and other tedious duties, she sent for Raz and Proxy Queen Alwinarwe.

"How may we serve you Cousin?" Alwinarwe asked.

"I need your help," Ayrenn replied. "I will be traveling, in secret and alone, to Vvardefell. I need you Cousin, to maintain the charade that I am in these chambers taking time to unwind while the truce holds, and for you Raz to get me there with no one the wiser."

"I will do as you ask Cousin," Alwinarwe said, "but I must ask you why this secret trip is important to you?"

"This one will do as he is asked as well my dear friend," Raz said, "but he too wonders, what is it you plan to do?"

"I have had time to reflect," Ayrenn said, "on a great many things. And in hindsight I have realized some things about Marie and my relationship with her. Of all the people she has met, interacted with, and helped over the past year, she has kept most at arm's length. There have been very few she has opened up to enough to even so much as give hugs to. But even among those few, I am the only one she made it a point to leave an apology for when she went on her way. No one else has gotten that courtesy. Not Emeric, not Jorunn, no one. When it was time for her to move on she simply did so. As far as any of us, or any of your spies know, I am the first and only person she has shown that kind of affection for. And I believe that may be my opening to seek answers from her that she would offer no one else."

"This one thinks that is a fool's errand," Raz said quite matter-of-factly, "but it is your errand to run if you wish to."

"I agree," Alwinarwe added. "I don't think you'll get anymore answers out of Mystery Marie than anyone else has, but I know your stubborn streak better than to try to change your mind."

"Good," Ayrenn said. "Then I trust Alinor to you both. I will return in one week."

The next day, dressed in simple common clothes, and concealed by an enchantment that changed her hair and eye colour so no one would recognize her, Ayrenn stepped through a portal in a field near Ald Velothi, a quiet secluded seaside abode on Vvardenfell's Northwest coastline. She had aimed the portal to drop her a 10 minute walk east of the home, so anyone working the docks nearby would not see her appear from nowhere. Ayrenn inhaled deeply, enjoying the fresh air and the gentle sea breeze. She had never found the time to visit Vvardenfell in her brief 80 years. She just wished she could take more time to be a tourist. But she was here for a purpose, and so walked past the crabshell house to the shoreline, and there, roughly 60 yards north of the docks, she found Marie, her boots on the shore, standing calf deep in the sea, just staring out quietly at the horizon. She had changed since they first met, her once long and braided white hair now mostly shaved, save for sidebangs draping the left side of her head. She had clearly been crying, and stood with her arms crossed. She did not turn as Ayrenn approached, but Ayrenn could tell that Marie was aware of her, as she saw Marie smile ever so slightly at her approach.

"You're late," Marie said, still not looking away from the sea.

"I was..." Ayrenn began, a bit taken aback, "not aware I was expected?"

"Oh come now," Marie said, still not turning to greet her friend, "you're as stubborn as a nix-ox and you're one of the few people clever enough to have noticed my uncharacteristic apology. It was practically an invitation only you would understand."

"So you wanted me to follow you?" Ayrenn asked.

"Wanted?" Marie said sadly. "No. Expected and dreaded? Yes."

Marie finally turned to look Ayrenn in the eye, her own puffy and red, and with that she grabbed her boots with one hand, and Ayrenn's hand with the other, and lead Ayrenn to Ald Velothi, which as it turns out, was her home.

A few moments later, the pair sat on a bench on the third floor balcony, sipping some wine and enjoying the view.

"I must admit," Ayrenn said, "I'm quite surprised you own a home. I'd have bet my Kingdom you were very much not the kind to set down roots."

"Well," Marie began, "I'm going to be here for a very long time, and once I've finished everything I came here to do, I'll need a place to stay away from the world, out of history's way, alone, and hopefully forgotten. So I asked a favour of the new Archcannon of Vivec. He owes me both his new job and his life after all, so he was more than happy to grant me the deed to this place while leaving my name off the public record."

"Is that why you came here in such a hurry," Ayrenn asked, "that you couldn't wait a day to see me again?"

Marie stared quietly off into space again, and visibly choked back another round of tears.

"I had something I needed to do," Marie replied, "and it needed to be done in person. And because of it, I am not the only person in tears today."

"Go on?" Ayrenn asked, resting a hand on Marie's shoulder, trying to offer support and reassurance without being pushy.

"How much of the events surrounding Nocturnal's attempt to control the Crystal Tower have you been filled in on?" Marie asked.

"As much as you told anyone," Ayrenn replied. "As much as you and that Psijic woman told Raz and Alwinarwe. Why?"

"The girl," Marie said sombrely, "the one Raz tried to train as an Eye, who balked and fled to Nocturnal's waiting arms. Veya. I knew her. I and... a dear friend of mine... stopped her from slaughtering the entire Redoran council of Balmora in a fit of blind rage over the death of her brother under the orders of her own father. Naryu and Raz apparently go back some years, and Naryu and I convinced both the remaining Redoran leadership AND the Morag Tong to let Veya live, under the condition she be forever exiled from Morrowind entirely. Raz agreed to take her in as a protege. But Veya balked, feeling like it was just a prison of another kind, and found her way into Nocturnal's service. And she left me no choice. Veya died by my hand serving Nocturnal."

"And..." Ayrenn asked hesitantly, "you came back here to tell Naryu in person."

"Yes," Marie said quietly. "Nothing can break your heart more than seeing a steely-eyed self-assured master assassin on her knees sobbing, screaming in anguish. Naryu held a dagger to my throat, tears streaming down her cheeks, swearing she would end me for killing Veya, and I didn't so much as even try to push her away. I felt the blood running down my neck and I did not move. And Naryu finally just collapsed into my arms, apologizing, and admitting that she knew Veya would do something selfish and stupid and get herself killed. She had just assumed that stupid thing would be trying to sneak back into Morrowind to see her. After she finally composed herself, Naryu apologized for cutting my neck, but asked me to leave and never talk to her again. She understood why I had to kill Veya, but could not forgive me for doing so. And so I came home to cry, and to wait for you."

"I am," Ayrenn said, "still not clear on that. So do please explain to me how it is that you had hoped I would NOT follow you, yet fully expected I would?"

"Because I know you all too well," Marie said. "Some things just... run in the family."

"Pardon?" Ayrenn said, confused.

"Let me begin," Marie said, taking Ayrenn's hand in her own, "by making it absolutely clear beyond any possible doubt that I should not under ANY circumstances be telling you a damned thing that I'm about to tell you, that I am breaking any number of the universe's rules by doing so, and that once I HAVE told you, you can never ever unlearn it, and never ever act upon it or share it with ANYONE. Not even Raz. So, i know you have questions, the same as Emeric and Jorunn did, and I know that you are far more single-minded than either of them about getting answers. I also know that if you give me your solemn vow that you indeed will not ever speak of this to anyone, nor act upon any of it to change your own fate, you will honor that vow because to break any vow you make in good faith is as abhorrent an idea to you as it is to me. And I think I know you well enough to know that by this point you will have realized that, if we continue this conversation, you will leave it knowing things you should not ever have known, and that it will be a burden like none you have ever known, a weight on your very soul greater even than the war."

Marie let those words hang for a moment, squeezing Ayrenn's hand and looking her dead in the eye.

"Knowing these consequences," Marie finally said, "are you still hell-bent on getting the answers you seek?"

"I am," Ayrenn said without any hesitation, sure that Marie could not possibly tell her anything that would weigh on her more than all the deaths caused by the war had.

"Then swear to me," Marie said, "on your life, on your honor, on the sanctity of the Dominion itself, that you will not only keep whatever I tell you secret, even from Raz, and that you will not act upon any of it even if it would give you an advantage to do so. Swear it. Or leave here before you cannot go back."

"I swear it," Ayrenn said, again with no hesitation, "by my life's blood, on my honor as Queen of the Aldmeri Dominion, and on our friendship. I will tell no one of what I learn here today, and I will never use anything I learn to my own advantage or anyone else's."

Marie sighed sadly and let go of Ayrenn's hand, holding herself as if to keep herself upright.

"As you wish," she replied quietly. "Come inside then. We may as well be warm and comfortable while I completely destroy your life with knowledge you should never have."

"Aren't you being a tad melodramatic?" Ayrenn asked with a smile. Marie stopped cold at the balcony door, hung her head low as if in deep shame, and simply said "no. Not in the slightest."

A few moments later, the pair sat on a couch in what appeared to be a simple quiet bedroom. Though it was clear to Ayrenn that the bed was only used by the sleeping pile of cats curled up upon it. Ayrenn looked around the room as Marie quietly sliced some cheese and bread on the coffee table before them. It was simple and sparse in it's furnishing, and most of what was here was a mix between simple practical comfort, and piles of haphazardly tossed gifts and trophies the people of Tamriel had given her that she clearly had no sentiment for.

"I am..." Marie began, "not.... I'm not.... I don't belong here."

"In Vvardenfell?" Ayrenn asked.

"In this time," Marie replied. "I am from roughly 1000 years in your future. I was commandeered by the Princes, against my will as always, and as tends to be my life, drafted into saving Tamriel. In roughly 720 years, Mehrunes Dagon will attempt to rupture the barriers between Oblivion and Nirn and conquer Tamriel. 300 years later, after taking the time to painstakingly study the plan Mehrunes employed, to find out what was working and what lead it to fail, Molag Bal sent his own consciousness into the past to try it for himself, at a point in history where continent-wide bloodshed had weakened the barriers, making it possible to shatter them entirely. For reasons I will explain later if you still wish to know them after I complete my tale, the other princes, AND the 9 Divines, realized that, if Molag succeeded, the blow to the flow of time would not let him CONQUER Nirn, but instead destroy it. All of it. So the Aedra and Daedra, for the first time ever, worked in concert, pooling all their power to send me back, to this time, to do everything I could to stop him. And as you know, I succeeded. Then those three idiots, Mephala, Vile and Nocturnal, decided to use the confusion left in Bal's wake, and take advantage of how weak the barriers still were, so I had to keep working to stop THEIR plans, to protect history. Soon, I'll be on my way to Elsweyr to deal with the dragons that imbecile Tharn accidentally released, because my history says that Dragons are not to return to Tamriel until the Fourth Era when Alduin returns. And when I've done that, I'll return to this house and quietly stay out of history's way. Hopefully I'll fade to a myth in a few decades, and eventually be forgotten entirely as history intended, since no records exist of my exploits in this time."

"That is..." Ayrenn began, "quite a tale. A very unbelievable one. I am hesitant to even entertain it, and were it anyone else telling me this nonsense,"

Marie turned to look at her with angry stern eyes, eyes that immediately silenced Ayrenn. Eyes that somehow reminded her own when her mother would give her that exact same look.

"You have a son," Marie said bluntly, and waited for Ayrenn's response. Ayrenn was stunned. She sat there, mouth agape, in shock.

"No one..." she stammered, "no one knows that but Raz. And Raz would NEVER have told ANYONE. How do you know about my son? NO ONE is EVER supposed to know of him!"

"Six years ago," Marie began, "while you were traveling, readying yourself to become Queen by learning about the world, you met and fell in love with a Breton man. You had planned to marry him, bring him to Summerset, but an agent of the Veiled Heritance murdered him before your eyes, and you in turn killed them. You and Raz went into hiding, and you realized you were pregnant. You bore the child in secret and had Raz make sure he would be raised far away by a good family, fearing that he would be forever at risk if anyone ever found out about him. It killed you to do it, but for his own safety you let him go."

"I ask you again," Ayrenn said, angrily, "how do you know this?"

"Because you told me," Marie replied, "the very first time you shook my hand. The moment we made skin to skin contact, your mind was an open book to me, and without wanting it to, it flooded my own. Your every thought, hope, fear, memory, and wish. And I needed to know why. So I had a conversation with Azura, who is the reason I can never die. And she confirmed what I suspected."

"Which was?" Ayrenn asked.

"That had only ever happened to me one time before," Marie said. "Touching someone and being bombarded with a flood of memories and knowledge. It happened 700 years from now, when Almalexia touched me and woke all my memories of the person I was before I was Marie. So I suspected if the same happened to me touching you, it was because we were connected somehow."

"And what did Azura tell you?" Ayrenn asked incredulously.

"I am," Marie said quietly, "your great to the power of twenty times granddaughter. I am the descendant of the 5 year old growing up as we speak in High Rock. And that's how I knew you would not listen to reason, how I knew you would insist on the answers you should never get. Because that stubborn dogged determined nature is a family trait. And I know that you know it's the truth, because you felt comfortable with me from the moment we met, and you have always wondered why."

Ayrenn just sat there, staring at Marie. Her mind was desperately racing for something, anything else that could explain all of this better than what she was hearing, but Marie's cold sombre demeanor and her own gut instincts told her it was true. She slumped where she sat, and with a lump in her throat Ayrenn realized Marie was right. The weight on her soul had just tripled, and she wished she had never asked.

"So..." Ayrenn said quietly, her own eyes filling with tears, "you weren't trying to scare me with dramatic hyperbole. You were trying to be merciful and spare me."

"I did warn you," Marie said with a weak chuckle. "But we both know that was a futile hope. You were NEVER going to listen to me. You HAD to know. And on that note, this is your last chance to stop. So please, I am begging you Ayrenn... Gran.... don't ask me to continue."

"Do I win the war?" Ayrenn asked without even thinking.

".................... no," Marie said sadly. "None of you do. The truce will be broken in 11 months in a drunken bar fight between soldiers from all three factions on the eve of a first attempt at peace talks. The war will go on for ten more years, until a man named Tiber Septim conquers Skyrim, disbands the Pact, and leads his own army against the Covenant and the Dominion. He slaughters you all and unites all of Tamriel under the banner of the first Septim Dynasty, and peace that will last for 800 years, until a new Aldmeri Dominion forms and declares war on the rest of Tamriel for allowing Tiber Septim to be worshipped as a God. After his death, the Aedra call Tiber up and the 8 Divines become Nine, with Tiber becoming Talos. The New Aldmeri Domionion will be the antithesis of everything you founded yours to be. It will be ruled by racism, hatred and exclusion, driven by the belief that all races are beneath the Altmer. Your legacy will be shat on by the very same kind of people you created the current Dominion to fight; bigots, racists and bullies. Emeric and Jorunn's heads will adorn spikes outside the White-Gold Tower in 9 years, while you vanish entirely. History is unsure of your final fate. Some believe you were killed in battle and your body lost amongst all the other corpses. Some believe you fled like a coward and went into hiding. Some even believe Tiber captured you and kept you hidden away as his personal slave. But no one knows for certain. Not even me. Hell, not even Azura had an answer for me on that."

Ayrenn sat quietly, staring into the candlelight. Marie took her hand again. They sat there, quietly. For over two hours they just sat there quietly, saying nothing. Finally, after trying those two hours to process everything, Ayrenn began to weep and just collapsed into Marie's arms, and Marie just held her and let her cry, like family should. Eventually Ayrenn cried herself to sleep. Marie shooed thecats from her never used bed and tucked Ayrenn into it, then returned to the couch. Marie didn't sleep after all, so she just quietly watched Ayrenn sleep.

The next morning she made Ayrenn breakfast. Ayrenn didn't speak the entire time they ate. After breakfast Marie lead her back up to her balcony to watch the sun rise over Red Mountain. After a few moments watched the light grow across the horizon, Ayrenn finally spoke.

"Why you?" she asked.

"Why me what?" Marie replied.

"Why you," Ayrenn repeated. "Why did the Eight... the Nine, and the Princes send you?"

"Because," Marie sighed, "through no choice of my own, I'm an immortal living Goddess. I can never die, and I am not handcuffed by compacts and rules as the Aedra and Daedra are. In 700 years, Azura will pluck the strings of fate to get me here, to Vvardenfell. I will become the Nerevarine, and kill Dagoth Ur by destroying the Heart of Lorkhan, which even now as we speak sits deep in the bowels of that volcano. And in so doing, all the power in that heart, the power that the Tribunal and Dagoth siphoned from it to become false Gods? It all poured into me. So Azura basically tricked me into unwittingly becoming the most powerful being on Nirn. I can't die. I can never find peace. All I can do is muddle through and help people. And I can't go back to my own time. So it will be a millennium until I get to see my daughter again. Because I do the right thing, even though it usually means I suffer for it."

"So what do we do now?" Ayrenn asked, sipping the coffee Marie had brewed her.

"I don't know," Marie said. "You gave your word you won't use anything you learned to your advantage. And you have places you need to be over the next decade. But I HAVE been thinking all night, as I watched you sleep."

"About?" Ayrenn asked.

"Well," Marie said, the barest hint of a smile on her lips, "as I DID point out, no one knows what happened to you at the end of the war. No one. Not even the Gods. So I have an idea."

"You don't... you can't mean..." Ayrenn asked.

"What's the point in being an actual Living Goddess," Marie smirked, "if you can't bend the rules of fate once in a millennium? No one knows what happens to you in 9 years. And in the last year I have been forced to make choices that left good people dead. And it bloody HURTS. It ALWAYS hurts. No matter how hard I have tried, in ANY time period, good people die, and even as a Goddess I can't stop it from happening. Except I can. This once I can. I can make sure history continues to never know your fate, because I can make sure you vanish off the face of Nirn, safe and sound, and have a new life, where no one will ever recognize you. If you'll let me."

Ayrenn simply stared at Marie, and said nothing.

9 years later, Ayrenn knelt in a puddle of blood, pooling around the still warm corpse of Razum Dar, who had just taken an arrow for her. Tiber Septim was marching on the White-Gold Tower, just as Marie has told her all those years ago. Word across the battlefield said Emeric had fallen an hour earlier, and now the last few Dominion stragglers in the Tower were all that remained to Septim's way. What few Dominion soldiers that were left ran outside to die on their feet in battle, with dignity and strength, leaving Ayrenn alone on a floor full of corpses, cradling her best friend's dead body. With tears in her eyes, she closed them and whispered aloud.

"Marie," she said softly, "I'm ready now."

When Ayrenn opened her eyes, she was in a quaint bedroom, before a mirror. She blinked, at first not recognizing herself in the mirror. Her hair was brown, her ears were shorter, her eyes were grey, and she was almost an entire foot shorter. She looked half Breton. She studied the face in the mirror, and smiled sadly. She wished she could have saved Raz too, but when she heard a teenage boy's voice call out for his mother from the other room, Ayrenn realized what Marie had done.

She went out into the living room. She was in a decent unassuming house in Wayrest. Her son was here, the boy she had given up. Time had been rewritten. Now the boy had never been raised by foster parents, but by her. Her name was Lenaida, and she was a confectioner beloved by the cityfolk for her yummy pastries. She wiped the tears from her eyes and greeted her son.

"What is it Madren?" she asked.

"There's some lady at the door to see you," he replied. "Says she's an old friend of yours."

"Well then dear," Ayrenn-Now-Lenaida said, "show her in."

As Ayrenn-Now-Lenaida sat in her living room to greet her guest, a woman with shoulder length bone white hair, a scar down her cheek and only one good eye walked in and sat in front of her.

"I'm sorry about Raz," she said. "His fate was recorded. I couldn't change his."

"I understand," Ayren/Lenaida said.

"Are you happy?" Marie asked.

Ayrenn/Lenaida looked at her son, her mind beginning to process all the new memories of raising him the past 16 years, not immediately realizing that those new memories were replacing her old ones.

"I am," she replied, and turned back to Marie, only to look confused.

"I'm sorry, who are you again?" she asked Marie.

"An old friend of your late husband," Marie said. "I promised him I'd look in on you when the war ended. We were platoon mates all those years ago. I was with him when he died. I think he'd be happy to see how well you've done for yourself, and how well your son has grown. I'm just here to keep a promise and see that you're well. I hope I haven't intruded."

"No," Lenaida said. "No, I'm glad you did. It's good to know someone was with him as he died. It would be sad to learn he had died alone."

"Well then," Marie said with as genuine a smile as she could wear, "I'll take my leave them. Be well Pastry Queen."

Lenaida had never been Ayrenn. She remembered nothing of Ayrenn. Ayrenn was some queen from somewhere else she heard about occasionally from town criers. All there was now was Lenaida the confectioner and her strong healthy son. As Marie left, she felt the briefest tinge of sadness, but quickly shook it off, and politely waved as the curious stranger left.

Marie walked briskly, to the Wayrest Mages Guild, looking for her friend Gabrielle Benele.

"Thank you for helping me with the memory magic," she said, now barely restraining tears. Gabrielle just hugged her.

"I still don't understand why you needed it," Gabrielle asked. "If it's hurting you this badly, why do it? Why erase her memory of you?"

"Do you really think," Marie choked out through sobs, "that she could truly enjoy the fresh start I've given her with the weight of knowing everything she knew? For her to be happy as Lenaida she had to forget she was EVER Ayrenn. The only reason YOU know the truth about me is because you're a nosy little cheating busybody who read my thoughts without consent trying to figure out how I survived a direct hit from Angoff's blade through my gut like it was an insect bite. And I can't erase YOUR memories because you have wards up. YOU shouldn't know the truth about me anymore than she ever should have."

"Oh be fair," Gabrielle said. "In my shoes you'd have been just as curious about a woman walking off an otherwise mortal stab wound. I HAD to know how you did that."

"Yes well," Marie said, trying to compose herself, "it was still a shitty thing to do to a friend."

"Then why mess with Ayrenn's head?" Gabrielle asked.

"Because it was the right thing," Marie said. "I can carry the weight. She shouldn't have to."

"So what now then?" Gabrielle asked. "Back to your lonely little crab house on Vvardenfell to hide from the universe?"

"You're always welcome to visit," Marie said, and quietly vanished in a puff of smoke to go stay out of history's way.

Epilogue; 700 years later.

Ald Velothi was a small settlement now. What long ago was just a single house with a dock nearby was now a small but vibrant fishing village by the sea. A young woman wandered into town, running an errand for House Redoran in her bid to become Hortator. She was an angry little thing, only 17, sent her straight from prison in the Imperial City to do the Emperor's bidding. As she walked through the village, a whistle caught her ear. The young girl turned sharply, her eyes narrowing, her auburn hair blowing in the breeze. She spotted the source of the whistle; a white hair woman with scars and one eye.

"What's your problem lady?" young Marie spat angrily. 

"Oh was I ever this young?" old Marie asked with a smirk.

"What the hell are you talking about?" young Marie spat.

"Nothing," old Marie smiled. "Just wanted to see this new Incarnate everyone is talking about."

"Well good, now you've seen me," young Marie said. "And now you're seeing my back."

With that, the young, not yet a Goddess, not quite the Nerevarine Marie stormed off, looking for the man she was here to get a package from. Old Marie just smiled, stood up, handed the keys to her old house to the woman who ran the tradehouse.

"You sure you wanna just give me the big house Miss Var?" she asked.

"Yes N'Walah," Marie replied. "It's time I moved on. Things are changing around here. Big things are coming. And I'm just an old woman. Best I stay out of history's way. And besides, we both know you'll convert that old crabshell into a bunkhouse for all the fishing crews. It's the right thing to do. I leave it in good hands."

With that, Marie made her way to Seyda Neen to catch a boat to the mainland, to find a new place to avoid getting in her own way until she caught up to herself. She still had about 500 years until she could safely see her daughter again. All she could do now was wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Been playing a lot of ESO of late and got the itch to add to Marie's story by pulling some timey wimey stuff to screw with the poor thing more. Hope you lot like it.


End file.
